Logitech buys Saitek on the verge of the release of Star Citizen

Logitech International SA (NASDAQ: LOGI) recently bought the Saitek brand and the Saitek line of controller products. The company posted the news on Friday and said it was an “exciting day for Logitech.”

Saitek is a designer of consumer electronics, famous for its PC gaming controllers, mics, keyboards, and analog flight or drive controllers such as joysticks, throttles, and rudder pedals.

In particular, Logitech promoted Saitek’s line of flight farms and space simulation controllers on their blog. The company claims those are the go-to products for anyone into games like Eve Valkyrie, Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous and Microsoft Flight Simulator of Farm Simulator.

Gaming controller company Saitek will merge Logitech in the coming days for just $13 million. Image Source: Saitek

In 2007, Mad Catz bought Saitek for $30 million, but many customers complained about a quality dip in their products.

Logitech believes simulation games will keep growing and will become a big genre in the Virtual Reality consoles. The company also announced plans to make dedicated controllers to VR-enabled simulators and peripherals they expect to make thanks to Saitek’s technologies.

The Mad Catz season

Under the hat of Mad Catz – a US company producing video game controllers, like the Rock Band battery and guitars – Saitek made their two most popular devices: the X-52 in 2008, and the X-55 in 2014, both to use in flight simulation games like the highly-acclaimed Star Citizen. But other products made during Mad Catz are full of bad reviews in online marketplaces like Amazon.

On February 2016, the company announced it would lay off 37 percent of its staff because of severe investor concerns about their Rock Band 4 controllers.

Meanwhile, the company is building a custom controller for Star Citizen, to go along with the upcoming release of the game. The ambitious prototype released back in October 2015 combines controller for both FPS and space flight sections of the video game. The controller includes a hands-on throttle, stick with a keyboard and a numeric pad.

Star Citizen is the ‘No Man’s Sky’ that won’t disappoint

Considering the open-universe mode for No Man’s Sky has caused many positive, as well as negative feedback, Star Citizen could’ve learned something from the game’s mistakes. No Man’s Sky expands players’ experience throughout a vast number of planets to explore. The game’s algorithm is set to develop each world as different as possible from the rest, but that’s not how Star Citizen is going to work.

The game will present four main components: first-person space combat, mining, trading and customization of gear, and space exploration. It also includes acting from Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, and Andy Serkis behind motion detector suits.

The game is built with a public-fund pillar of $123 million by newcomer company Cloud Imperium Games. The developers have been releasing the game by modules. The persistent online universe will the last module and it will come early 2017.